The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of Argentine Identity

In 1910 Alberto Gerchunoff’s The Jewish Gauchos, a book on Jewish life in agricultural colonies, was published in celebration of the centennial of Argentinean independence. The creative potential of the oxymoron “Jewish gaucho” coined by Gerchunoff has been proven over and over again, and it has become a shortcut to talk about the experience of Jews in Argentina, and all over Latin America. Its use in the title of The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of Argentine Identity is misleading, since while Judith Noemí Freidenberg does treat the figure of the Jewish gaucho, her book does much more than that. Freidenberg documents one hundred years of the life in Villa Clara, an agricultural colony in the Argentinean province of Entre Ríos, and is both observer and participant in the celebration of the town’s centennial. As the author shows, Villa Clara’s Jewish majority has moved...